London Loves, the Misery of a Speeding Heart
Yesterday, for the first time in all my 18+ years in London, someone called me a faggot on the street.
Money from my two shifts at the gay sauna had just landed in my bank account. So, as a treat, I decided to get a lamb doner wrap for dinner at a restaurant by Hackney Central that I used to love back in the day. Took me half an hour to walk there; I tried to appreciate the rows of houses I walked past, reminding myself I was in London for only a short time.
The restaurant was empty, a few Turkish men standing around behind the counter. It looked decadent, past its glory days of line ups to buy its food. Everything in London, actually, feels a bit like that right now. The post-Brexit and post-pandemic gleam. As the men served me with smiles they made little comments to each other in Turkish. I tried to make nothing of it.
On the walk back, I was thinking to myself how London is hard, how it spat me out and now was having trouble swallowing me back down. Suddenly a young white man cycled past me and shouted: "you batty boy, you fucking faggot." My first thoughts: was I walking in some way that gave me away? (Certainly wasn't my clothes, all dark and non-descript.) Would he be waiting up ahead for me? And had I just materialised London's response to my unkind thoughts about it?
The rest of the walk was uneventful but everything was suddenly coloured differently. I walked past women gritting their teeth and wondered if these are feelings women have all the time after some random harassment; or even queer people who are generally more fabulous than me. I felt nothing for the young man, just apprehension of encountering him and having to avoid a more physical interaction.
I got home and received a phone call from my friend and host, V., who should have been at his therapist: "Ollie, are you home?"
"Yes, I am," I replied, sitting in the living room with the lamb wrap on my lap.
"I'm stuck in the bathroom. Can you come help me?"
And so we tried various things to open the bathroom door but the lock was broken. Screwdrivers, oil, tugging and pulling. Finally, we called a locksmith. When I got back to my lamb doner, the bread and meat tasted hard. I forced myself to eat it.
Money from my two shifts at the gay sauna had just landed in my bank account. So, as a treat, I decided to get a lamb doner wrap for dinner at a restaurant by Hackney Central that I used to love back in the day. Took me half an hour to walk there; I tried to appreciate the rows of houses I walked past, reminding myself I was in London for only a short time.
The restaurant was empty, a few Turkish men standing around behind the counter. It looked decadent, past its glory days of line ups to buy its food. Everything in London, actually, feels a bit like that right now. The post-Brexit and post-pandemic gleam. As the men served me with smiles they made little comments to each other in Turkish. I tried to make nothing of it.
On the walk back, I was thinking to myself how London is hard, how it spat me out and now was having trouble swallowing me back down. Suddenly a young white man cycled past me and shouted: "you batty boy, you fucking faggot." My first thoughts: was I walking in some way that gave me away? (Certainly wasn't my clothes, all dark and non-descript.) Would he be waiting up ahead for me? And had I just materialised London's response to my unkind thoughts about it?
The rest of the walk was uneventful but everything was suddenly coloured differently. I walked past women gritting their teeth and wondered if these are feelings women have all the time after some random harassment; or even queer people who are generally more fabulous than me. I felt nothing for the young man, just apprehension of encountering him and having to avoid a more physical interaction.
I got home and received a phone call from my friend and host, V., who should have been at his therapist: "Ollie, are you home?"
"Yes, I am," I replied, sitting in the living room with the lamb wrap on my lap.
"I'm stuck in the bathroom. Can you come help me?"
And so we tried various things to open the bathroom door but the lock was broken. Screwdrivers, oil, tugging and pulling. Finally, we called a locksmith. When I got back to my lamb doner, the bread and meat tasted hard. I forced myself to eat it.